THEY ALSO BOTCHED THE NORTH KOREA ISSUE

The radical war-whore wingnuts in the criminal Bush regime deliberately mislead the American people about the threat N. Korea posed, according to a new book. I suppose any time you have a freakshow like John Bolton involved, you can expect the worst.

'Intel spin' by US hardliners sparked NKorean crisis: book

9 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — In circumstances echoing the Iraq war controversy, hardliners in US President George W. Bush's administration spun intelligence and triggered a nuclear crisis with North Korea, says a new book to be released this week.

Intelligence on a North Korea effort to acquire components for uranium enrichment was politicized to depict the hardline communist state running a full-fledged production facility capable of developing a nuclear bomb, said the book by former senior CNN journalist Mike Chinoy.

Now with the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy, Chinoy wrote "Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis" after gaining unprecedented access during his 14 trips to North Korea and conducting 200 interviews in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and other Asian capitals.

The book showed that US intelligence did discover in 2002-2003 a North Korea effort to acquire components that could be used for uranium enrichment but that it was only a procurement effort.

There was no credible intelligence that North Koreans actually had a facility capable of making uranium based bombs.

Once again, Cheney and his minions are implicated:

It showed how Kelly's successor Christopher Hill seized control of the policy process -- first, by violating instructions from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and holding unauthorized bilateral meetings with the North Koreans, and then, after winning her over to his side, by freezing out hard-line opponents of engagement, including critics in the Vice President Dick Cheney's office.